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Rainfall has traditionally been plentiful for growing tea, especially in India but with recent changes in the climate, surface and ground water are becoming important irrigation systems.

At a time when climate-change is impacting tea-cultivation in a major way, efforts are on to make tea estates climate-smart so that the industry develops resilience to uncertain and negative climate change impact.

A project has been launched by the Tea Research Association along with Southampton University on climate — smartening tea plantation landscapes, which would run for two years. It is funded by the U.K.-India Research Initiative.

The project is investigating the impact of climate change on tea production and livelihoods in North-East India, revolving around climate variability, land-management practices and climate-smart agriculture practice.

It may be mentioned here that tea is a rain-fed perennial crop, which provides the main ingredient for one of the world’s most important beverages. It supports livelihoods across the humid regions of south and south-east Asia and east Africa. The physiology of tea plants is closely linked to external environmental and climatic factors (elevation, precipitation, temperature, soil moisture, temperature and fertility, light duration and intensity, humidity, shelter, shade and CO2 concentration) and any adversity in these conditions can significantly impact yield, revenue and livelihood security. Rainfall has traditionally been plentiful for growing tea, especially in India but with recent changes in the climate, surface and ground water are becoming important irrigation systems.

Climate-risk is high in Assam, ranging from annual flooding of the Brahmaputra river due to intense monsoon rains and soil water-logging, to winter precipitation deficits with seasonal droughts. Regional trends indicate annual mean minimum temperatures have increased and annual mean precipitation has decreased, particularly in Assam. Such impacts will have a significant effect on tea crop productivity and directly affect the livelihoods of dependent communities as Assam contributes 50 per cent of India’s 1,200- odd million kg.

The effects, which were noticed over the last few years, seem to have become pronounced over the last three years or so leading an industry honcho to say: “it is no longer climate change…it is climate chaos”. ITA officials said that the weather was hardly following any pattern.

Crop-loss has become almost the norm across the world’s tea growing regions. India too has suffered. What worries the industry most is that although it has so far not experienced any major crop loss, tea quality is suffering and pest-attacks are increasing. Due to climate change, there has been crop loss during seasons when some of the best teas are harvested (spring and early monsoon).

However, broad-scale climate-landscape modelling predicts that tea yields in north-east India are expected to decline by up to 40 per cent by 2050. As yield is directly associated with revenue, changing climate is also likely to impact economic structures of those reliant on tea, particularly the smallholders given their increased vulnerability to changes in the system.

The Tea Board of India has come up with an incentive scheme to provide monetary support towards additional transport and handling charges incurred by tea exporters in the north-east.

Under the scheme, tea exports from the north-east are eligible for a financial assistance of Rs.1.50 per kg of the product if the same is exported from the Inland Container Depot (ICD) located in Guwahati’s Amingaon area.

“The scope of the original scheme for assisting tea exports towards meeting handling, packaging, transport, freight charges and value addition costs have been extended with a view to also compensating exporters who are shipping teas from ICD Amingaon,” a Tea Board of India circular said.

The tea authority under the ministry of commerce and industry said the companies shipping Indian variants of tea abroad have to pay additional charges which are levied by chipping companies and the scheme will help the exporters.

The scheme will be applicable to exports during the 2014-15 fiscal and on disbursements made during April-December 2014.

Several international institutions, including the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa), have come forward to bail out the tea industry which is passing through “difficult times” because of climate change, resulting in unpredictable weather and increasing pest attacks.

Against an unprecedented dry spell in the last couple of years, tea-rich Upper Assam has received 260mm more rainfall this year, receiving 1,095mm rainfall till now against 829mm last year.

Tocklai director M. Muraleedharan said the institution has tied up with Cranfield University of the UK and Kobe Gakuin University of Japan recently to find ways for the tea industry to cope with climate change in one of the highest tea-growing regions of the world.

“Process is also on to tie up with Ethical Tea Partnership, a London-based organisation, which is currently working with the Kenyan tea industry on climate change,” the director said.

Tocklai deputy director R.M. Bhagat said the project with Cranfield University would be funded by the British Council while the Kobe Gakuin University project would be funded by Sumitomo Foundation of Japan.

He said from September, Nasa would start providing data on soil moisture status of the Northeast, which would be a big boost for not only tea but for other crops as well.

“Data from Nasa will start flowing in from September and all the participating institutions in this particular project would benefit,” Bhagat said.

Tocklai is among the 50 institutions in the world that have tied up with Nasa in the soil-mapping project.

“We have tied up with Nasa in this particular project and we are hopeful that its data would be of great help for not only tea but other crops in the region,” Bhagat said.

He said the data would help in proper application of fertilisers and irrigation facilities.

The Tocklai director said an unpredictable weather and the limitation for the use of chemicals after the implementation of the plant protection code on tea have resulted in an increase in pest attacks on tea bushes.

Plant protection code (PPC) is a set of guidelines for regulating the chemical inputs in tea cultivation and was implemented from January 1 this year with the aim to make Indian tea a safe and healthy drink.

Muraleedharan said Tocklai has appealed to the Central Insecticide Board, the agriculture ministry and other authorities concerned to allow tea planters to use at least two chemicals – flubendiamide and emamectin benzoate – which are most essential to fight against the luper caterpillar, one of the most common pests of the tea bush.

“Going by the increasing pest attacks, there would be a big impact on production,” he warned.

Assam produces more than 50 per cent of the country’s over 600 million kg of tea annually and the five districts of Upper Assam – Tinsukia, Dibrugarh, Sivasagar, Jorhat and Golaghat – produce over 400 million kg of tea annually, which is 70 per cent of the state’s production.

The Tea Board of India is giving a big push to organic tea production in the country for the first time by providing 25 per cent more subsidy than the normal subsidy of 30 per cent.

This has for the first time been incorporated in the Twelfth Plan by the board to give a boost to organic tea, which has been gaining momentum in the country (see chart).

Besides, it has a premium market commanding high prices abroad. “We will try to mitigate the problems being faced by gardens wanting to go organic to some extent,” S. Soundarajan, director of tea development, Tea Board of India, told The Telegraph.

The total money kept for orthodox tea production subsidy is Rs 150 crore. A total of 50 per cent of the cost of certification will be paid as subsidy.

The term organic describes both how an agricultural product is grown and processed. An organic product is free of chemicals, antibiotics, synthetic hormones, genetic modifications and field use of sewage sludge as fertiliser.

It takes a minimum of three years for a garden to become organic and it will have to be certified as organic by an accredited certifying agency. Organic tea constituted two per cent of the total organic products exported in India in 2012-13.

The problems for gardens that wish to go organic are two-fold – yield drop and increase in cost of production. Sources say the average yield drop is 44 per cent over the conventional cultivation and over 65 per cent increase in the cost of production.

Officials say one of the primary reasons for a shift to the organic sector is the premium market that commands high prices. Besides this, organic tea cultivation could be a solution to restore/increase the continuous depleting crop productivity under the present chemical farming practice, to restore soil/ecosystem, depleted under years of synthetic fertilisers and agro-chemical application and to redress the problem of climate change and to generate employment and reduce health hazards for the workers.

“It is a progressive move by the board to encourage gardens to go organic. But to get benefits for us who already have an organic tea garden – Hathikuli in Assam will have to see and talk to the board,” managing director of Amalgamated Plantations Private Limited, Jagjeet Singh Kandal, told The Telegraph. He said the company is proud to be pioneering in the development and evolution of an effective package of practices for organic conversion and cultivation.

The market for organic tea is in Europe and especially Germany. “The market in India is very small and a niche one,” he said.

The 687-hectare Hathikuli tea garden, situated on the periphery of Kaziranga National Park, is certified organic according to the Indian, US, European Union and Japanese organic agricultural standards.

The process of organic transformation of Hathikuli garden was undertaken in 2007 and was achieved in 2011. “Though the move is good I am sceptical of the economic benefits after three years of conversion from inorganic to organic. Costs are rising,” C.S. Bedi, managing director of Rossel Tea, said.

The working group on climate change constituted by the Inter-governmental Group on Tea under the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, which met in Rome last year, had said organic cultivation of tea is a sustainable way to battle climate change. “Organic cultivation of tea is a sustainable way to combat climate change. Use of naturally available products, such as organic manure or compost, increases climate resilience,” the group had said in its report last year.

The tea board today announced that tea production in 2014-15 was 1197.18 million kg, of which the share of Assam was 606.80 million kg. The production in 2014 calendar year from January to December was 1207.31 million kg, of which Assam’s share is 610.97 million kg.

Tea Research Association and London-based Commonwealth Agricultural Bureau International have joined hands to develop a more ecological approach to tea production in order to reduce pesticide application.

“The project will eventually lead to development of a toolbox of tried and tested practices to facilitate transition towards ecological production. The project envisages the development of a package of practices in relation to pest management, leading to the adoption of non-pesticide control methods resulting in reduction of pesticide application in tea,” N. Muraleedharan, director of Tocklai Tea Research Institute, said.

The three-year programme will start in Assam in collaboration with the Tocklai institute and tea growers from three different areas – Upper Assam, south bank and north bank. “The bureau had approached us to conduct the project as we are the experts in tea research,” he said.

The bureau is an international not-for-profit organisation that improves people’s lives by providing information and applying scientific expertise to solve problems of agriculture and the environment.

On an average, a garden spends Rs 8,000 per hectare on pest control measures and this amount can go up when pest infestation becomes huge.

“Three pest management systems will be demonstrated representing transition from conventional to non-pesticide management. Pest management practices selected from those identified in the literature and field studies and ready for validation from current research, will be implemented in these experiments. Experiments within these blocks will evaluate other innovations to be added to the arsenal of practices available. The major pests such as loopers, tea mosquito, thrips, green hoopers and termites will be the target depending on their prevalence in the three selected zones,” Muraleedharan said.

He said with the introduction of the Plant Protection Code, the tea industry is increasingly adopting non-chemical control measures because the choice of approved chemicals is limited. The industry has started using light traps, sticky traps, manual collection and bush sanitation as non-chemical methods.

“India is the second largest producer and exporter of tea in the world after China. This production and trade are powerful engines for economic growth, poverty alleviation and food security, but often, harnessing this power can be difficult. Tea crops suffer from a range of pests and diseases for which pesticides are the main solution but this results in increased production costs and potential risks to human health,” a statement from the bureau said.

“We are evaluating the environmental and economic feasibility of applying alternative methods to manage tea pests and diseases in India. The scientific teams are doing this by fostering better understanding of these ecological approaches to management, evaluating current practices and examining how these alternative approaches can be integrated into tea production to raise overall sustainability of tea production,” it said. This will ultimately look to tackle pests in a sustainable and alternative way, protecting tea growers, workers and the surrounding biodiversity, it added.

Usha Ghatowar smiles wryly when asked about the pay she earns picking leaves at a colonial-era tea garden in Assam.

“Do you think 3,000 rupees are enough when your monthly expenses can be double that?” she mumbles, as she puts on her “jaapi” hat of woven bamboo and palm leaves and takes a sip of tea from a steel mug.

As the women workers around Ghatowar nod in agreement the heavens open – it has started raining heavily in recent days after three largely dry months.

Unrest is brewing among Assam’s so-called Tea Tribes, whose forefathers were brought here by British planters from neighbouring Bihar and Odisha more than a century ago, as changing weather patterns upset the economics of the industry.

While rainfall has declined and become concentrated, temperatures have risen – ideal conditions for pests like looper caterpillar and tea mosquito to infest the light green tea shoots just before they are ready to be plucked for processing.

Use of pesticides and fertilisers has nearly doubled as a result in Assam’s 800 big tea plantations, known as gardens, and the rising costs are making Indian tea less competitive.

As a result, firms in Assam are resisting calls from activists and student leaders to lift the daily wage of tea workers from about $2 agreed to recently, blaming weak prices and the doubling of crop expenses over the past 10 years.

Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi, whose Congress party was routed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the 2014 general election, has sided with the workers ahead of state polls due early next year.

COURTING THE TEA VOTE

State elections have national significance in India – Modi needs to win most of the state assembly contests in the next four years if he is to take control of the upper house of the federal parliament and ease the passage of his reform agenda.

Tea tribe votes can swing results in about a quarter of the seats in Assam, the country’s main growing area, and the BJP has been making inroads.

In an interview to Reuters, Gogoi denied an opportunistic motive behind his call for the wage to be raised to about $3 a day.

“I had warned the tea planters about climate change but they did not take care for a long time,” Gogoi said. “They thought it would be easy money. I can’t allow injustice for tea labourers.”

Assam Tea Planters Association (ATPA) Chairman Raj Barooah said they would examine Gogoi’s demand but “there has to be a fair wage that can sustain the industry”.

The average temperature in Assam has risen by 1.4 degrees Celsius in the past century and rainfall is down by 200 mm (8 ins) a year, said R.M. Bhagat, chief scientist at the Tea Research Association in Assam’s tea hub of Jorhat.

“In the last 30 years we have seen that the magnitude of the effect of climate change is pretty high,” he said. “Rainfall has gone topsy-turvy. There is either too much or too little water, forcing planters to use sprinklers on what is a rain-fed crop.”

Several tea garden labourers and planters Reuters spoke with said tea factories in Assam now only run for about six months compared with round-the-year operations earlier.

Less rainfall resulted in an 8 percent fall in tea exports last year, according to the Indian Tea Association (ITA).

India is the world’s No.2 tea producer but is less export-oriented than other producers thanks to its big home market, and Sri Lanka has been extending its lead as the world’s third largest exporter behind China and Kenya.

LEARNING TO ADAPT

Labour accounts for 60 percent of the total costs for tea firms in Assam, whose prices last year were higher than those auctioned in Mombasa in Kenya, Chittagong in Bangladesh, Limbe in Malawi and Indonesian capital Jakarta.

Profit margins at Kolkata-based McLeod Russel, the world’s largest tea producer, are estimated to have fallen to their lowest in six years in the year ended March 31, according to Thomson Reuters data.

To cut labour costs, tea companies like Aideobarie Tea Estates, owned by ATPA’s Barooah, are exploring greater use of machines to harvest and spray nutrients or pesticides.

Barooah, whose company employs 48-year-old leaf plucker Ghatowar, her husband and now her eldest son, is also thinking of expanding into high-margin white tea made from tea buds.

Other tea gardens have moved to cultivating black pepper, turmeric, ginger, vegetables and fruit alongside tea, while Indian scientists are testing tea varieties that can adapt and survive in hotter and drier conditions.

But in the face of long-term climate change, that may not be enough.

“With rain so scarce, a day may come when Assam will not grow tea any more,” said tea scientist Subhash Chandra Barua. “Planting a crop is fine but economic cultivation may not be feasible”.

There’s a hot zone in Assam that has nothing to do with ULFA insurgents, Bodo militants or illegal migrants from Bangladesh. It’s about elephants.

Sonitpur district can be called Ground Zero of that human-elephant conflict.

Between 2001 and 2014 there have been 245 human deaths and 146 elephant fatalities in Sonitpur. In one year, 2001 alone, 32 elephants died in Sonitpur in retaliation for a spike in human casualties. And the brunt of those deaths have been felt in the tea gardens that dot the district. There’s no mystery why it’s happening says Anupam Sarmah of the World Wildlife Fund.

“Sonitpur had maximum forest loss. Almost 65 percent. That’s why it’s so severe. And the tea garden is the hot spot of human elephant conflict.”

For the wild elephant, the tea garden is just an extension of the forest.

When a herd of wild elephants camps out in a tea garden, on land where tea bushes have been uprooted and Guatemala grass planted to rehabilitate the soil, they can ruin the land overnight says A. K. Bhargava, the managing director of Apeejay Tea.

But Bhargava, who self-deprecatingly calls himself a maali or gardener also admits “Their home is our home.”

It’s in that spirit that Apeejay Tea has joined hands with World Wildlife Fund to implement a three-year strategy to minimize human-elephant conflict in one of its epicentres. Apeejay owns four tea estates in the Sonitpur hot zone. The area however has many other problems- illegal encroachment in forests, militant activity and deforestation with political blessing.

The project hopes to come up with a matrix that can put a number to the loss from damage to property. It wants to set up movement corridors for safe passage for the elephants. And it hopes to find innovative new ways to keep elephants from coming into conflict with the humans in the area.

That can prove to be quite the battle of wits.

Elephants are remarkably intelligent creatures and can quickly figure out when they are being hoodwinked. Dipankar Ghose of the World Wildlife Fund says in the 80s and 90s the big buzzword was EPT or Elephant Proof Trenches that were dug to keep the elephants out. But soon elephants figured out how to get around trenches. A young elephant got inside the trench and helped nudge the herd across and when everyone had crossed over they dragged the young one out.

Farmers would place solar-powered red lights in their field which would blink in the dark mimicking predator eyes. But they have to be moved around otherwise the elephants soon figure out that it’s not a real predator.

Assam has a large population of kunkis or domestic elephants that can drive the wild ones back into the forest. But Ghose says now he sees elephant herds splitting into three herds and going into three villages. “There are not enoughkunki resources to combat that,” says Ghose.

Clearly there’s not going to be one magic solution that will solve human-elephant conflict. It’s going to require reinvention, imagination and investment. And if kunki anti-depredation squads work in Assam, they will not work in Bihar which does not have that many domestic elephants.

In India on average 400 people are killed every year in conflict with elephants.

The problem, says Sarmah of WWF, is unlike the tigers, 70 percent of whom are in protected areas, 80 percent of elephants in India are outside protected areas. And compared to 2,226 tigers in India, as per the last census, there are 27-30,000 elephants in the country. The conflict is ongoing and deepening but it does not capture popular imagination the way a man-eater might. “Tiger is like cricket and elephant is like hockey for us,” quips Sarmah.

And though it’s humans who are spreading into what used to be elephant territory, people do not see it that way. “If half my crop is damaged over night my tolerance is reduced even if I love Ganesha,” says Ghose. But he remembers when a raiding elephant died in a village, electrocuted by accident when an electric pole fell on it, the villagers who were up in arms about it, were deeply upset. They garlanded the dead animal and offered prayers, afraid of the ill omen of an elephant death in their backyard. In Monabarie tea estate when six people were killed in three days by an elephant, the Forest Department asked the villagers to write a petition to have the elephant declared rogue, but the villagers balked.

But it is expensive keeping elephants safe from people and vice versa. An electric fence can cost Rs 3-5 lakh per km and needs maintenance. There are lower energizer fences being explored that would cost Rs 80,000 per km. There are plans afoot to develop an early warning system that would alert farmers about approaching elephants. The Apeejay-WWF project is investing in bio fencing in place of the electric fence and setting up nurseries to grow thorny bamboo for that purpose. The goal is to plant 40,000 saplings in three years.

The tea-estate and NGO partnership becomes even more relevant in the current budget climate. Everyone agrees in principle that when a four-lane highway is built, care should be set aside to create corridors for animals whose habitat is being fragmented. But the question is who pays. Highways will says elephants are the forest department’s responsibility. But the forestry and environment ministry had its budget slashed 25% under the Modi government. That’s where a corporation and NGO partnership offers some hope even though an elephant does not belong to either the tea estate or the World Wildlife Fund but to all of us.

In three years there should be a formal elephant corridor through the Sessa Tea Estate. It won’t end the conflict or stop the human pressure on forest cover. Wild elephants will still need 400 kilos of food a day and as hills are deforested they will search for it in fields and granaries.

Pegged at approximately Rs 150 crore, the green tea market in India is growing strongly and steadily with demand coming in also from Tier II and Tier III cities and manufacturers increasingly focusing on launching new variants

Cheap, affordable and addictive – have been terms synonymous with tea from the time it ceased to be an elite drink of the royals to become an affordable drink of the common man. Green tea is one of the fastest growing segments of the global tea industry. It is prepared from the leaves of camellia sinensis that have undergone minimal oxidation during processes. The concept of green tea originated from China and later spread all over the world. Some of the popular Japanese green teas are sencha, gyokuro, kabusecha, matcha, tencha, genmaicha and hojicha.

The journey of tea in India has indeed been fascinating and interesting. With rising health awareness, Indians who are majorly black tea drinkers, are now showing interest in green tea variants. Green tea is becoming an acquired cultural habit that is being driven by urban India’s urge to stay fit. Though presently green tea penetration in India is less than five per cent, however its demand is not just limited to metros and Tier I cities, but has also come to include Tier II and Tier III cities which have started consuming this drink on a regular basis. As a result of this growing penetration, the green tea market in India which is presently pegged at approximately Rs 150 crore has been growing upwards 50 per cent year-on-year.

With urban Indian consumers buying green tea for its many health-promoting benefits, manufacturers are increasingly focusing on making premium variants available in all retail channels, especially in modern grocery retail outlets. For instance, consumers are spoilt for choice with tea products of companies such as Organic India, GAIA Herbs, Twinings, Typhoo, as well as big FMCG giants like Hindustan Unilever, Tata Global Beverages, who are either launching new variants or re-launching their green tea product range. Moreover, GAIA Herbs has also introduced green tea variants, namely cardamom, and honey and lime, to cater to an increasing number of health-conscious consumers in urban cities. International manufacturers are also expanding their presence in institutional channels, including hotels, to generate awareness of their premium brands.

Tetley, sold across 40 countries and a part of Tata Global Beverages, has six flavours in its green tea portfolio including ginger, mint, lemon, honey and lemon, citrus and spice, and aloe vera. The company enjoys a market share of 35-40 per cent. Though in the total tea revenues of Tata Global Beverages, green tea currently has a very small share vis-a-vis black tea, the company expects the green tea segment to contribute significantly in the coming years. And with the increasing emphasis on health and wellness, the potential for categories within tea is immense.

For Twinings, India is one of the top five growth markets. The company, that has about 35 per cent market share in the premium and super premium teabag category in the country, is looking at increasing its business in India five-fold in the next five years. India is the third largest tea sourcing country for Twinings after China and Kenya. The company is a big buyer of Darjeeling and Assam teas and is increasingly buying tea from the Nilgiris. Twinings is part of Associated British Foods. Their range of green teas in the India market include green tea, green tea and lemon, green tea and mint, Earl Grey green tea, jasmine green tea and lemon and honey tea.

Also to stay ahead of the race, Wagh Bakri Tea Group has been offering one of the largest green tea ranges in India consisting of green tea, organic tea bags and regular green tea. The company also has different flavours across its green tea range like green tea mint and green tea tulsi and is currently working on expanding its green tea range under its wellness category. Apart from major Indian cities, Wagh Bakri Tea Group is also aggressively marketing its green tea products in Tier II and Tier III cities. Though at present, the company’s green tea revenue compared to normal CTC is negligible but in one to two years the green tea category is expected to comprise of 10 per cent of the company’s overall sales.

Global trend

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), the overweight population is expected to reach 1.5 billion by 2015 and growing healthcare costs in the US alone is expected to cross US$ 117 billion; all this is creating major opportunities for the growth in sale of weight management products such as green tea. Rising consumer awareness about the benefit of green tea in curing various diseases further triggers the global market of green tea.

Asia Pacific contributes the largest market of green tea in the world. Apart from India, countries like Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan and China are growing markets of green tea in this region. Rising population and healthcare awareness is further expected to boost the green tea market in Asia Pacific. Europe is the fastest growing market for the green tea industry.

Tata Global Beverages (TGB), the Rs 7,622-crore beverage arm of the Tata Group, has inducted Tata Tea into its global power brand list. With this, the brand has become the second Indian product of the group to achieve this status. The other is mineral water brand Himalayan.

Typically, products with a strong international appeal, such as Tetley, Tea Pix and Eight O’ Clock Coffee, have been part of the list for some time now. TGB had inducted Himalayan into this club four years ago.

Tata Tea’s induction was on the cards but was delayed with the management debating whether such a move would be beneficial because of its strong presence in markets such as India, Southeast Asia and West Asia. However, Ajoy Misra, managing director of TGB, says: “We launched Tata Tea in Canada two-three years ago and it is doing well there. Remember Canada is an evolved tea market, where you have established brands. Tetley is already there, with Unilever’s products.”

TGB proposes to push Tata Tea deeper into the Canadian market, targeting areas beyond where the Indian diaspora is. (Its taste is considered stronger than Tetley’s.) The same strategy will be applied in the UK, where Tata Tea is available in select outlets.

These efforts are tied to TGB’s objective of building a strong portfolio of products that can straddle price points and segments. “Currently, there are white spaces, notably in coffee and water, which could be filled both organically and inorganically. In the UK, the top-end, mid-end and bottom-end are covered with Tea Pix, a luxury tea brand; Tetley, in the centre; and Tata Tea now, at the lower end. We would ideally like to replicate this model in other markets and across our verticals. If that necessitates an acquisition, we will do it. If an in-house product can fill the gap, we would look at that as well,” said Misra.

According to Misra, the acquisition of the Map coffee brand in Australia last year was part of this plan to fill gaps in key markets.

In India, the company might consider introducing one of its international coffee brands such as Eight O’ Clock (available in the US) or Grand (available in Russia) to fill the vacant slot in packaged coffee. The company is also mulling taking Tata Coffee’s packaged brand, Mr Bean, national as an alternative. Mr Bean is a popular packaged coffee brand in Kerala and Tamil Nadu.

TGB will also look at co-creating products with Tata Group companies in areas such as ambient beverages.
Misra says it is also talking to “institutes and institutions”, exploring the prospect of jointly developing new products with them.

This aggression by TGB comes with the group and company chairman Cyrus Mistry laying special emphasis on the consumer and retail vertical among three other clusters as part of his Vision 2025 document. The plan here includes achieving a market capitalisation comparable with the 25 most valuable companies in the world in the next decade. Among other things, Mistry proposes to invest $35 billion (Rs 2.1 lakh crore) in the next three years in consumer & retail, defence, aerospace, financial services, realty, and infrastructure.

Amalgamated Plantations Pvt Limited, formerly Tata Tea, will host the first-everSirish Festival at the company’s picturesque Hathikuli tea estate near Kaziranga National Park on February 7 and 8 in a bid to promote the unique cultures and traditions of the tea tribes of Assam.

“Sirish Festival, the first ever integrated festival to honour the contribution of the tea tribe community to Assam, is a watershed moment for us. We expect that future editions of this annual festival will provide for not only national but also international recognition for this great community,” Ranjit Barthakur, chairman of APPL Foundation, said.

The foundation looks after the corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities of the APPL and is primarily engaged with local communities in Assam in the areas of education and skill development, environment, healthcare, culture and heritage.

Sirish, a Sanskrit word meaning soul, is the local name for the shady trees in tea gardens. The festival will showcase traditional dance forms, sports, art and literature of the tea community of Assam. Apart from the local population of Hathikuli and its adjoining areas, representatives for all the 25 tea estates of APPL, tea tribe community leaders and icons from various fields will attend the festival.

The high point of the festival would be the recognition and honouring of two icons from the community – one each from the fields of literature and culture. The recognition will be in the form of a citation and cheque, which will be presented by the chief minister Tarun Gogoi at the venue on February 8.

A DVD of a modern rendition of a traditional jhumur songcalled Railgadi Jhumur will also be released during the festival.

The APPL Foundation official said competitions would be held among the participants of the tea community in jhumur dance, pole climbing, archery and other sporting events, which are popular among the community.

“Participants from APPL gardens will take part in this year’s festival but plans are there for participation from other company gardens from the next year’s festival,” the official said.

He said the tea community has made an immense contribution to the lifeline industry of the state and such festivals were necessary to give them recognition.

Although Robert Bruce discovered tea in 1823, the commercial cultivation started only after 14 years, when the first tea garden was established at Chabua in 1837. The British imported thousands of workers, mainly from the Chhotanagpur region, covering the states of Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa, West Bengal and also from Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. These indentured tea garden workers later came to be known as the tea tribe community.

The important constituents are the Santhal, Tanti, Orang, Munda, Bhuiya, Bhumij, Paharia, Proja, Gaur, Kharia, Bheel, Boraik, Ghatowar, Teli, Goala, Rajak, Koya, Telenga and Kamar. The culture of different tribes got intermixed within themselves and also with the existing local Assamese culture, and an amalgamation of tea tribe culture and a new way of living evolved.